Editors’ note: To contextualise these translations of Karlheinz Deschner’s encyclopaedic history of the Church in 10-volumes, Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, read the abridged translation of Volume I. Head hunting Christendom liked to contemplate the heads of defeated enemies; the rulers found pleasure in it and also the governed. It was customary to send throughout the…
Tag: Christianity
Darkening Age, 21
Pieter Coecke van Aelst, Story of Saint Paul: The Burning of theBooks at Ephesus, designed ca. 1529, woven before 1546 (medium:wool and silk, woven under the direction of Jan van der Vyst). Editor’s note.Bold-typed emphasis in the last paragraph is mine. In chapter eleven of The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, Catherine Nixey…
Unhistorical Jesus, 2
An icon of Saint Mark the Evangelist, 1657. How we know Mark was the earliest Gospel How did students of the four Gospels determine that the earliest of them is Mark? The answer is fairly simple and the case is overwhelmingly clear. How certain is the conclusion? It is so certain that only a…
Commissary to the Gentiles, 5
by (((Marcus Eli Ravage))) If Paul’s own writings fail to convince you of this interpretation of his activities, I invite your attention to his more candid associate John. Where Paul, operating within the shadow of the imperial palace and half the time a prisoner in Roman jails, is obliged to deal in parable and veiled…
Christianity’s Criminal History, 113
Editors’ note:To contextualise these translations of Karlheinz Deschner’s encyclopaedic history of the Church in 10-volumes, Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums, read the abridged translationof Volume I. The Catholic ‘children emperors’ ‘These sovereigns followed the examples of the great Theodosius’. —Cardinal Hergenrother, Church Historian ‘The emperors were also pious Catholics’. —Peter Brown ‘The world is sinking’. —St Jerome The division…
Unhistorical Jesus, 1
Romulusappearing to Proculus Julius. I have read the first three chapters of Richard Carrier’s book, On the Historicity of Jesus, in addition to the later chapter on Paul’s epistles. In my entry on Thursday, about the dark night of the soul suffered by the Aryans in general and the white nationalists in particular (including the so-called revolutionaries),…
Commissary to the Gentiles, 4
by (((Marcus Eli Ravage))) Perhaps the bitterest foe of the sectaries was one Saul, a maker of tents. A native of Tarsus and thus a man of some education in Greek culture, he despised the new teachings for their unworldliness and their remoteness from life. A patriotic Jew, he dreaded their effect on the national…
On Richard Carrier
A depiction of Ecce Homo, as Pontius Pilatedelivers Jesus to the crowd (Antonio Ciseri, 1862). Before reading Carrier, I imagined that there was a historical Jesus crucified by Pilate if we only eliminated all the legendary tales, miracles and resurrection stories that appear in the Gospels. As I have already said, it was not until the…
Darkening Age, 20
In chapter 10 of The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, Catherine Nixey wrote: In Alexandria, Cyril conducted house searches to hunt out works by the loather pagan emperor Julian ‘the Apostate’… This was a new literary world and a newly serious one. ‘The extent to which this new Christian story both displaced…
Christianity’s Criminal History, 112
Editor’s note: Here we see once again some passages on the historical Libanius: a central character in Gore Vidal’s Julian. What Deschner says here about Libanius is splendidly novelized by Vidal in the very final paragraph of his novel. To contextualise these translations of Karlheinz Deschner’s encyclopaedic history of the Church in 10-volumes, Kriminalgeschichte des…